


make it pure

by toomanyhometowns



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Hot Weather, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Whether they like it or not, cameos by Nile and Andy but they are not around for the [ahem] rising action
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:21:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29746971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns/pseuds/toomanyhometowns
Summary: "They’re looking for dinner," Nicky’s voice tells him, though in what language Joe could honestly not say. "I brought back a razor, in case you’ll want it."Later, when he can move again, Joe will delight in being free of the scarf his beard has become around his face; now, he smiles at his Nicky.--(It's hot in Singapore.)
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 12
Kudos: 130





	make it pure

**Author's Note:**

> i wanna say it simply, i wanna make it pure  
> i wanna be mine and i wanna be yours.
> 
> Title from Long Neck’s [Mine/Yours](https://longnecklass.bandcamp.com/track/mine-yours-2), since I'm kiiinda trying to work through the album! Written for a prompt from a list of [kissing prompts](https://stoppit-keepout.tumblr.com/post/635540718959689728/50-types-of-kisses-writing-prompts): 30. Weak, sweaty kisses because it’s unbearably hot. plus general hot weather misery courtesy of tumblr user bakedapplesauce‘s very evocative [post](https://bakedapplesauce.tumblr.com/post/635521103734915072/i-keep-thinking-about-joe-and-nicky-and-sleeping).
> 
> Started this in December and posted a leetle version then, but it kept bugging the back of my mind so I added More Explicit Sex and put 'er up here. unbeta'd, if you catch a typo please let me know :)

Each breath Joe draws in sticks to the insides of his throat, only reluctantly surrendering any oxygen to his lungs. His limbs sprawl out everywhere on the hotel’s stifling, swallowing bed, taking only seconds in any conceivable cool spot before corrupting it into yet another pit of warmth.

He could peel himself out of the damp sheets and lay on the floor.

He pries his eyelids open and without moving his neck, surveys the floor space. Nile’s duffel is between the two double beds, and there’s a pile of Andy’s things in the space at the foot of their bed. He closes his eyes again, and puffs a stream of air up towards the sweaty creases of his eyelids. It’s not particularly cooling.

A soft click of a lock, and the door just barely stirs the humid air; Nicky’s footsteps, and his sympathetic not-quite-laugh, not-quite-sigh.

For him, Joe will move his neck.

He turns (and now his left ear will be hot against blankets, his right ear will breathe for a moment), and drinks in Nicky.

Nicky, for his part, looks more self-possessed than any person should in this weather. His shirt is one of those new fabrics engineered to look the same dry, wet, or covered in viscera, and his shorts are black. Just black. The lightness in his mouth and the ease in his brows tell Joe that Nicky sees him, and loves him, and knows that until the dripping heat dissipates tonight, Joe will be in some misery.

“They’re looking for dinner,” Nicky’s voice tells him, though in what language Joe could honestly not say. “I brought back a razor, in case you’ll want it.”

Later, when he can move again, Joe will delight in being free of the scarf his beard has become around his face; now, he smiles at his Nicky.

Nicky steps over a discarded pillow and plants his hands on either side of Joe's head, where the pillow had been, and bends to brush a kiss to his sweaty curls. His lips are blessedly different from every other sensation smothering Joe right now, and they pull an appreciative hum from his throat. His eyes close again.

“One moment,” and Nicky’s retreating to the bathroom, and a faucet complains, and the water runs, and after a drawn out beat, stops.

“I love you,” Joe tells the cool, wet towel being draped over his chest, and “I love you,” he tells the hands smoothing it down.

He pulls in a deep breath, lighter now thanks to Nicky’s magic trick, and bestirs himself to sit up, heat-lazy limbs ungluing themselves for Nicky.

“Thank you,” he presses into Nicky’s cheek, and his lips punctuate it. It’s barely a kiss, but then Nicky’s turning and finding him, and then it’s more.

Nicky's hands are still slightly cool on his neck, but his breath, his mouth burn where Joe joins himself to him. The heat is unbearable, and so is the cool where the towel rests on him, and so is the wet sound of their kiss, so Joe doesn't bear any of it and instead groans deep and loud.

"I'm here." Nicky's wide hands are urging him to lie back down on the bed, shifted so he's on a fresher part of the sheets and underneath his love for a brief, stifling moment before Nicky smiles and moves over him onto the damp side without flinching. "My poor Joe."

Joe twists to rest on his side, and Nicky tugs the wet towel to drape it crossways over Joe's belly and back. "Nicky," is all he has to say.

It'll be a while before Nile and Andy get back. Sex will make Joe run hot, hotter, combust, and then his ashes will settle and then maybe finally he'll feel like he can breathe.

"I should say my goodbyes, eh?" Nicky asks, ruffling Joe's beard gently with the backs of his fingers. The skin underneath tingles and shivers and aches for Nicky.

"I could keep it," Joe offers half-heartedly.

"But you shouldn't, because you'd be sweltering," Nicky completes his thought. "Besides," and he nips at Joe's jaw, a brief welcome sharpness, "I miss your beautiful cheeks."

Joe feels said beautiful cheeks pull into a smile, feels their round lines and softness. _I'll show you beautiful cheeks,_ he thinks, but doesn't say. His mind is still drippy and melting, his tongue only good for languid exchanges with Nicky's.

He doesn't want to talk, he wants to kiss, so he does. He wants to slip his hand into Nicky's shorts, so he does, grateful as always that Nicky's clothes leave Joe-sized allowances in waistbands and cuffs for him to sneak through. The fabric braces a line across his forearm as his grasping fingers brace against the warm handful of Nicky's ass he collects. Nicky groans, and Joe feels his glutes flex against his touch. Digs in tighter.

The towel is closer to Joe's body temperature than he'd prefer, but it's leaving behind tickles of water whenever it shifts that cool him fragmentally down, counteracted immediately by the way his body burns for Nicky's. The overall effect is that he's electric-aware of every brush of Nicky's fingers against his torso as his big hands drift from Joe's face to his shoulders, his chest, and dip under the towel to his stomach.

Nicky doesn't need to ask what he wants _(he wants to feel Nicky closer than the smothering air)_ , they've been here before _(they've slid slick against each other with Joe's eyes sweat-stinging)_ , and today is exactly like every other day: Joe would die for love of Nicky. He'd live for him.

Those big hands deftly do away with horrible, clinging fabric, and Joe's jaw goes slack as Nicky coaxes him the rest of the way to hard, little teasing touches tempered with well-earned confidence.

"Oh," but his moan is muffled by Nicky's tongue, so he expresses himself by sucking on it, desperate, and his teeth might be digging in a tad but Nicky's never minded.

He feels drunk on drowning touch, carried off on the high of Nicky's sure grip and the pleasure it's relentless in dragging out of him. And _oh,_ his leg strays open, _oh,_ his fingers go feeble in Nicky's shorts, all conscious thought flees leaving nothing but Nicky, Nicky, Nicky.

Joe combusts. He breaks the kiss as he comes, spit cooling on his lips with each fast, jagged breath he pants in, jism pooling on his belly in hot blobs.

The low satisfied hum from Nicky is practically inaudible behind the pulse beating in Joe's ears, but he can feel the rumble where his arm is pressed against Nicky's chest.

Long moments pass as he rebuilds his thinking mind. He bats his eyes open to the welcome sight of Nicky, knowing and known, adoring and adored.

"That's better, I think," Nicky says, and now Joe can say what language it is--it's what it always is when it's just the two of them, their oldest tongue, the shared one they built together.

Nicky wriggles down the bed until Joe retrieves his hand from his love's shorts, and takes the towel's corner to wipe Joe down while he's trying to conjure another thought.

The air that had seemed so muggy and still before swirls in Nicky's wake where he sits up and contemplates Joe. Joe's eyes trace a bead of sweat down his neck and into his clavicle, then are drawn to the flex of his shoulders as he stretches. "A shower?"

The water pressure here isn't anything special, but that's not what Nicky is after. "Sounds good," Joe says, and belies his words with a lazy flop onto Nicky's lap, nuzzling in to find where he's hard and wanting.

Nicky laughs and it's Joe's favourite laugh: surprised out of him, gravelly with arousal, Nicky's. His fingers card through Joe's hair, firm on his prickling scalp.

The closeness is heavenly at first. Nicky's familiar smell springs moisture into Joe's mouth, and he noses at Nicky's fly with more intent, but it's not long before the suffocating heat starts to make itself known again. If anything it's more intense here, cradled between Nicky's thighs and stomach. The shower's not such a bad idea.

Joe looks up again from under heavy lashes and makes a show of licking his lips. The smile on Nicky's face had dropped in the face of his desire, leaving his expression serious, devouring. His fingers tremble slightly where they'd been scratching at Joe's head.

Joe blows a raspberry on Nicky's stomach before he can say anything and shocks another laugh out of him. "Come, love, let's get clean."

Moving in easy synchrony, Nicky and Joe unfold and untangle themselves up out of bed. Joe flips the soiled towel over one shoulder and smiles at Nicky's hungry eyes. They follow each other into the cooler press of tiles and spray of water.

By the time Nile and Andy come back with temptingly aromatic biryani and hokkien mee from the hawkers market, Joe's clean-shaven for the first time in a year and Nicky's cleaning his rifle, handling his bore snake and solvent with a lassitude that pleases something deep inside Joe.

"Joe, your face!" Nile strips off her mask to grin more effectively at him. Joe grins back. "Let me wash my hands, then I need to get a better look."

"Look all you like," Joe calls out. "You won't find a spot we missed."

Andy rolls her eyes fondly as she emerges from washing her own hands. "It was a joint effort, then?"

"We were very thorough, boss," Joe says. Nicky says nothing at all, but his eyes crinkle at the corners.

"Any appetite left for dinner?" she asks, carrying the take-away containers from their spot near the door and leaving one on Joe's side of the bed, out of the way of Nicky's firearm maintenance.

The room's still hot and humid, and the food is steaming when Andy opens it. Sweat is already standing out on Joe's lower back, between Nicky's shoulder blades, but his bones feel lighter now than they had an hour ago. A breeze unfurls itself in the small room, catching a couple flyaways of Nicky's hair.

"I could eat," Joe says.


End file.
